Nasdaq and Fidelity invest in new cryptocurrency exchange

The newly formed cryptocurrency exchange has reportedly raised 27.5 million U.S. dollars from investors. Among the elite investors are NASDAQ Ventures and Fidelity Investments.

The platform will offer cryptocurrency trading on the spot and future markets. Almost being like immune to current discouraging conditions, the duo financial giants made significant investments to the exchange, christened ErisX.

While Nasdaq has already acknowledged the deal, Fidelity is yet to comment officially. The new cryptocurrency exchange will enable investors to trade Bitcoin (BTC), Litecoin (LTC) and Ether on both spot and futures markets.

ErisX is expected to start operations shortly following regulatory approval. Thomas Chippas, CEO at ErisX, noted that the investments will be used “to build out our infrastructure and secure the appropriate steps are taken to develop a regulated market for digital assets,” and to hire staff.

ErisX is Wall Street-friendly and based in Chicago. Although Nasdaq and Fidelity headlined the major investments, their exact amount was not revealed.

Thomas Chippas further added:

“With increasing financial support from leading edge firms, ErisX stands to provide the most robust, secure and regulated digital asset offering available to both institutional and individual participants. Closing this second round of funding enables us to continue building our modern platform and expand our team.”

“Many of our customers have been seeking various hedging solutions and would be happy to see US regulatory compliant exchanges like ErisX provide spot and futures’ contracts in one platform. We are confident that our customers will find this strategic partnership beneficial.”, said Jihan Wu of Bitmain.

The news comes shortly after Nasdaq cited its commitment to relaunching a Bitcoin futures trading platform. Fidelity’s investment in ErisX is not sudden considering the firm’s priority of developing a custody solution before exploring other opportunities.

The other major investors who supported ErisX were Bitmain, ConsenSys and the Tokyo-based Monex Group. Bitmain and ConsenSys are well known in the cryptocurrency community while the other participants are from standard financial backgrounds.

ErisX will be “an important step in continuing the convergence of digital and traditional asset classes in global institutional financial services. [The platform] drive significant growth in institutional flows in both spot and futures digital asset markets in 2019.”, said Joseph Lubin, CEO of ConsenSys.

This is indeed good news! We are witnessing financial giants endorse the versatility of cryptocurrency and bring it into the mainstream. A move well received.